


Streetlights

by thequadsquad



Category: The Outsiders (1983), The Outsiders - All Media Types, The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dissociation, Four Years After Canon Events, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-05-01 12:56:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14521065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequadsquad/pseuds/thequadsquad
Summary: When the best kid Dally Winston ever knew got twisted up in a murder and died in a fire while he was still in jail, Dally took off the minute his ninety days were done.Four years later, for reasons of his own, Dally returns. No one is more unprepared than Ponyboy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tags and warnings will be updated as we go.

It was crack of dawn early and the whole house was dimmed down to faint grays and ruddy purples. Soda mumbled as Ponyboy lugged himself out of bed, turning over until his blonde hair was all that was left sticking out of the blankets. It was cold, that was right, and here was Pony stripping down into his school shorts with the sun still under the horizon.

It used to be that the first one up made breakfast, but since varsity track switched practice to before school and Soda wound up between jobs, Darry was the only one with time and a reason to crack any eggs in the morning. Pony didn’t like to eat before he ran anyway. It made his body slow and draggy and the coach was already all over him because he couldn’t kick his smoking habit, hard as he’d tried last summer.

He shoved his jeans and sneakers into his bag and stumbled out into the hall for his adidas. They were just about the nicest thing he’d ever owned, even counting those years Mom and Dad were alive and they got piles of new stuff for Christmas. Darry and Soda had about gone crazy when he’d made it to state last year. Even though he hadn’t medalled or nothing they’d still surprised him with brand new shoes. Ponyboy made a point only to wear the adidas when he was running so they stayed in shape pretty okay. They even had their own special spot in the closet near the front door, high up by the winter coats so they wouldn’t get buried under muddy boots.

A long shadow was stretched out on the couch, not familiar enough to be Two-Bit or Steve, but not such a stranger to wake Darry. One of Tim Shepherd’s gang maybe, judging by the nasty scar twisting up behind the guy’s neck, big enough to be seen even without the lights on. Whoever it was, they spooked real good when Pony opened the closet door, jumping up and bashing their knee on the coffee table in their rush to stand.

“Je _sus_ fucking Christ!” the stranger swore. “Gonna get you a bell, Pony.”

Pony’s adidas went tumbling to the ground as the full face of the stranger turned to him. Pony _knew_ that curling lip and those dark, glittering eyes. Hell, that line of slouching shoulders was more familiar than any mountain range he’d ever laid eyes on.

“Dally!” Ponyboy’s voice rose to a near hysterical shrill, even as he fought down the tug of panic still thudding in his throat. He was no good with surprises. In fact they made him sick. “How in the – When did you even – Dally?”

He repeated the name like it might be some kind of trick.

In the dark, the blade in Dally’s hand flashed golden with the light of the streetlamp outside. Just as quick it vanished and Dally bent over his busted knee like nothing was to make of it.

“I got in last night. You’ll about flip when you see my wheels, Pony. Soda might even kill me. Is he still working at that DX station?”

It was like Ponyboy was underwater. He shook his head slowly. “No. He got fired last year when Steve lifted some cash.”

“Huh,” was all Dally said, not looking too surprised or concerned about it. “Here I was thinking he might catch me filling up last night.”

“Last night,” Ponyboy repeated. “You’ve been here that long?”

Dally shrugged. “Some time, yeah.”

“Are you staying?”

Dally’s face wiped blank as quick as a chalkboard. Pony hurried to backtrack. “I just mean, have the other guys seen you yet? They’ll be crazy when they find out you’re back in town.”

Like nothing happened, Dally’s face regained its animation. “Nah, they ain’t seen me yet.”

Ponyboy stalled. “You want some breakfast?” His coach would kill him if he missed practice, but he couldn’t just walk away now. Not after four years of nothing.

Dally turned his face to the window and the light made his features seem real for the first time. New scars were etched into his skin forming little mountains and canyons where the streetlight hit him.

“I better not,” Dally said. “I already stayed past when I meant to.”

“Where you going?” Ponyboy asked.

Dally ignored him. “And what the hell are you doing up at this time of night, anyway? Don’t you know this is when decent people sleep?”

“You’re awake,” Ponyboy shot back, automatic.

Dally stared for a moment, then grinned. “Well, look at that. Here I was thinking you might not have changed at all. You get all tuff on me or something, Ponyboy?”

“I’m always tuff,” I said, though that was lie. It didn’t do anyone any good to admit you were less tuff than you ought to be – or said you were – or people thought you were.

“Got that right. How about Darry? Does he know your sneaking out? You turn into a rebel or something while I was gone.”

“I’ve got practice,” Pony said. “Track. I made it to state last year.”

“Well ain’t that swell,” Dally drawled.

“Shut up,” snapped Pony, but he was smiling. Dally was back. Dallas Winston, back in town. The prodigal greaser returns.

That smile slowly faded as Dally began to gather his stuff from the couch: a leather jacket, some socks, a pair of shiny black dress shoes.

Dally looked up as Pony watched him. “You think you could keep me being here quiet for a little while? I shouldn’t have crashed here probably, but I just couldn’t help it.”

“Are you in trouble?” Just the thought made Ponyboy want to throw up.

“No more than usual,” answered Dally. His grin was quick. Something that flashed by so quickly shouldn’t have been so provoking. Ponyboy didn’t know whether to slap him or –

“Yeah. Yeah, I can keep a secret,” Pony said.

“I know you can, kid.”

Dally’s bag was on his shoulder and his keys were in his hand. Outside the window the first light of dawn was breaking over the houses, flooding the city with a golden array that made the streetlights embarrassed. Even broken windows and beat-down cars looked good in the right lighting. Running out there, sometimes Ponyboy felt like he was the only shadow in the whole world. That his breathing was the only breathing and the only sound at all.

“So, you in?”

Ponyboy’s gaze snapped back from the window. Dally looked at him, half in expectation, half some other thing Pony didn’t recognize.

“Huh?”

“I asked if you wanted a ride. You’re heading to school, right?”

“Oh. Yeah. I mean, no, I gotta run it. But yeah, that’s where I’m going. I’m sorry.”

“Alright,” Dally shrugged. This time his expression settled firmly into something unknown and very familiar. “You sure are some space cadet still.”

A knob in Ponyboy’s spine tightened. “Sorry,” he said. He found his feet on the ground and stared at them.

They stood there a moment, neither of them really moving. This was the moment Darry would go have gone in for a handshake. Hell, Sodapop would have squeezed out a hug the second he laid eyes on Dally. Ponyboy wasn’t like that. He just stood there, hands are his sides, and waited.

“Well,” said Dally, sucking in a breath.

He didn’t say anything else. Ponyboy stood there, anticipating the end of that sentence, but Dally just hitched up his bag and walked out the door. A few seconds later, an engine turned over. A few second beyond that and Ponyboy followed.

Dally and his car – if there was a car, if there had been Dally – was gone.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings and tags will be updated as we go.

School was built in gray-scale. It was a place where fights were started but not finished, where guys hissed at each other in the hallways but left fists and blades for after the last bell.

Ponyboy was the only real greaser on the track team and even though most of the other kids weren’t really socs, running with them made Pony feel like a pound-mutt amongst wolves.

The coach was a decent kind of guy at least. Once a college track star, he was now a pot-bellied man with massive, tanned arms. He didn’t take crap from nobody and didn’t care who started what, but took interruptions of his practices with extreme prejudice.

“That’s laps afterschool, son,” he said when Ponyboy turned up at the field miles behind the rest of the boys. A few of the soccy runners smirked and exchanged glances, but Ponyboy’s head was so far away he barely noticed when he nodded.

He didn’t say anything. Even though he made good grades he was never any good at saying “yessir” like the teachers seemed to want, so really he was better off talking as little as possible.

“Well,” said the coach, “get to it.”

Distant, distant, distant. A whistle blasted off somewhere and Ponyboy barely heard it. He was in that place where nothing really mattered but the sound of his own breathing and the tap of his adidas against the track. A dash down the straight away. Pumping his arms as he took the corner. The straining spring of his calves. He loved that inside lane. Loved that moment when those who started last could shoot clear to the front on the burn of their legs. Ponyboy just dug it. The 100 meter sprint. The 200. The 400. Anything. Sodapop said Ponyboy looked like he was flying when he ran, but that wasn’t it. Sometimes running felt like the only thing in the world keeping Pony on the ground.

With the bell, everything came crashing down.

Ponyboy’s feet reluctantly dropped from a run to a jog and finally slowed to a crawl as they carried him away from the track and grass to the bench where he’d left his bag. He saw the rest of the team disappearing into the locker room, but that was normal. Ponyboy avoided the place when it was full if he could help it, preferring to shower alone.

“Damn, did the coach rip you a new one or something?”

Ponyboy looked up from where he’d been digging around for his street shoes. One of the junior varsity kids was standing a little ways down the bench, looking Pony’s way. Pony didn’t know him, though the array of freckles on his face set him apart.

“You say something?” Ponyboy asked.

“You’ve got this crazy scary look on, man,” the J.V. kid continued, waving a hand around his own face and scowling dramatically.

“So?” said Ponyboy.

“So, you okay?”

Ponyboy turned back to his shoes, stiff. What the hell did that mean? “I’m fine,” he said.

The kid sucked on his teeth, rocking back on his heals. He really did look young and that was coming from Ponyboy, who hadn’t grown an inch since he was fourteen. “You don’t look fine. Mitchel looked ready to spit fire when he saw you weren’t here this morning.”

Ponyboy stopped untying his laces. He looked at the kid, squinting. The only people he’d ever heard call the coach by his first name were all socs and even a junior soc could make Pony’s life miserable. What the hell did this kid want?

“Why do you care?” Ponyboy finally asked, easing his last shoe off. He glanced at the locker room, but it’d be a few more minutes at least until it cleared out enough for his comfort.

“What kind of a question is that?” The soc shook his head, laughing, and took two rapid steps closer. Pony jerked back quick-like and watched the soc’s red eyebrows climb up his freckled face. The kid put out his hands like some horse trainer, shoulders up near his ears. “Hey, okay. You’re a jumpy sort of guy. That’s cool. I was just coming to say hi. I’ve been watching you run for a bit. You’re really good.”

Ponyboy straightened up. He didn’t carry a blade – hadn’t even tried to for a long time – but he sort of wished he had one now with the way his adrenaline was going.

“You’ve been watching me?” Pony demanded.

The kid just shrugged, that easy smile spreading back over his face. “Mitchel said I’d better. He says you’re the most focused runner he’s ever seen and if I ever want to get out of my head and earn a spot on varsity I should take a page out of your book.”

And that was – well, that was okay. Track stuff, not street stuff. Ponyboy uncurled his tensed fingers, shaking out his nerves, and zipped up his bag.

The kid straightened up when Ponyboy did, slinging his own bag over his shoulders like they were friends and ought to walk together. “I thought he was off it when he said so the first time, but I get it now. You ever go running around town without the team? I know this great route around the pond in Fairway Park. You might like it.”

A snort rose before Ponyboy could stop it. “Yeah, okay,” he said, shaking his head. The last time he’d even tried walking home alone he’d wound up bleeding from the throat. Fat chance he’d try running straight through the West Side around some swanky park.

“You already know it,” the kid said, wilting.

Ponyboy squinted at him. “That’s not really my neighborhood.”

The kid didn’t get it. “Alright. Do you live more towards downtown? I’ve heard some fellas say Main Street’s traffic isn’t too bad around sunset.”

Now Ponyboy was smiling slightly. This was faintly ridiculous. “Nope,” he said. “Not downtown.”

The kid frowned. He followed as Pony made for the lockers, keeping half a step behind him. “Well, how about I just come to you then. Like I said, I get what Mitchel was saying now and I’d love to get some pointers from you before the next race.”

It struck Ponyboy then that even though his P.E. uniform was old and sort-of bleached out he didn’t look much different than the other boys dressed in red and white on the team. His hair was long, but there were a few hippie types on the team that grew out their hair long enough to be tied back or braided. Ponyboy realized that unless someone saw him outside of his uniform he didn’t much look like a greaser at all.

The thought churned his gut uneasily as he reached the locker door. Then he stopped suddenly and spun around, surprising the kid who stepped back.

“You know what? Sure. You meet me on the East Side by the train tracks at sunset and I’ll go running with you. Of course, we won’t be running around some _pond_ and you’ll have to leave your mustang at home, but sure. I can’t think of a single reason why I wouldn’t want to help a soc like you.”

The kid’s smile vanished like smoke. He took another step back. Then another. He stared at Ponyboy like he’d never seen him before, freckles real stark against his pale skin.

Which was just fine. Ponyboy didn’t care what some dumb little soc thought.

Ponyboy grinned, real wide, and thought of Dally’s ghost, back from four years of death to haunt him.

The kid straightened up, real stiff, and marched through the locker room door without looking back.

Good riddance.

*

“I see you’re home late,” Darry said, leaning against the chain-link fence that roped around their home.

“I see you’re guarding the mailbox again,” said Ponyboy, casting a glance at the letters in Darry’s hand. Ever since Ponyboy submitted his college applications in the fall Darry had taken to circling around the mailbox like some frothing bulldog.

“Where were you?” Darry asked, pushing off the fence. The envelopes in his hands were thin – probably bills. Ponyboy was half relieved.

“Coach made me run extra laps afterschool. I just finished,” Pony said.

Darry’s eyebrows lowered. “Just you? What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Pony.”

“Nothing major, I mean.” Ponyboy kicked at a weed poking up from the sidewalk. His promise of secrecy to Dally weighed on his tongue. The whole morning hardly felt real. There was a hazy surreal touch to it that made Ponyboy wonder if he hadn’t just dreamt it.

“I just mouthed off a bit at some kid,” Ponyboy said to the clump of weeds.

 “Ponyboy!”

“Just to some kid soc,” Ponyboy added quickly, seeing the vein begin to stand out in Darry’s neck. “It wasn’t hardly anything.”

Darry raked a hand through his hair, breathing in deep. He fixed Ponyboy with a stare that rooted him to the spot, lie or not. “You’ve got to be careful, Pony. You’ve got three more months of high school and then you’ll have college. I know you’ve heard it before, but god almighty kid would it hurt you to use your head?”

Ponyboy’s shoe twisted on the weeds, scraping green plant juice into the cement. “I’m trying.”

“Hell.” A long sigh deflated Darry. “I know. I’m sorry.”

A big arm wrapped around Ponyboy’s neck, pulling him in to one of Darry’s overwhelmingly massive hugs. Darry’s coat smelled like coffee and roofing tar and it was such a wonderfully _home_ smell that Ponyboy’s shoulders loosened despite himself.

“I don’t mean to nag you,” Darry said. “You’ve done good, little brother. You’re going to college. Maybeeven on a scholarship. That’s just – ” Darry shook his head, letting the wonder in his face finish the sentence for him.

“Yeah.” Ponyboy shifted awkwardly, like he always did when Darry got that reverent glow in his voice. He fiddled with the strap to his backpack, glancing up the porch steps to the house. “Hey, anything new happen with you today?” he asked.

Darry shrugged. “Started up on a new house on the West Side. That was about it.”

“No one stopped by?” Ponyboy asked.

“No,” said Darry. “I might have missed it though. Who’re you looking for?”

“Nobody,” said Ponyboy. He couldn’t stop a quick glance at the couch as he went inside though, looking for any sign that Dally had really been there. 

In his bedroom, Ponyboy dropped his backpack on the floor and looked out the window. Soda wasn’t home – probably gallivanting with Steve or Two-Bit – so Pony crossed the room and pulled up the window, sticking his head out.

After a few seconds, he pulled his head back in. He was being ridiculous. No mystery car drove by. No dark-eyed hood appeared suddenly down the street.

That was the problem with ghosts, Ponyboy figured, shutting the window and throwing himself on the bed. They were doomed to stay dead.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, look! An update. Who would have guessed it.

The thing about it was, even though Ponyboy had no intention of thinking about that socy track kid again – the one whose eyes stabbed into Ponyboy’s back the rest of the week at practice – it got stuck in Pony’s head that running around town wasn’t exactly the worst sort of idea.

“Lord, Pony, turn that light out,” hissed Sodapop, flopping over onto his belly.

Ponyboy reluctantly let the curtain drop, tip-toing across their room to swipe at his hair in the mirror hanging from the closet.

Sodapop, unhappily awake, peered at him from beneath his pillow. “Don’t you know what time it is?”

“Nearly seven,” Ponyboy said. He smoothed a comb through his hair, watching the grease turn the strands into something shiny and meaningful. He liked looking at himself in the mirror. Not for any vain reason – at least, not mostly. He just liked seeing his hair long and almost red and greasy, like it should be. He liked looking in the mirror and recognizing himself.

“Glory,” groaned Soda and he pulled the blanket over his head.

Pony grinned. A tempting thread of little brother playfulness found him. He seized the blankets and jerked. Soda gave a yelp as all that warmth and goodness vanished, shooting up and chucking a pillow in Pony’s direction. Ponyboy dodged, laughing. As Soda made a vaguely threatening motion to rise, Ponyboy dropped the blankets, letting Soda grab the comforter and thump back on the bed with a grumble.

“Laying around is making you lazy,” Ponyboy chided. “How ‘bout you get a job, huh bub?”

“How about you get on out of here,” Sodapop said. “What’s wrong with you anyway? You’re smiling like a maniac.”

“Says you.” Ponyboy said, but checked himself in the mirror anyway. A stupidly eager face smiled back at him, which dimmed as he caught sight of it. He sucked in a breath until his own serious stare confronted him.

Don’t act a fool, his reflection seemed to say. What are you even doing?

“Seriously. Where are you going off to?” Sodapop sat up in bed, holding the blankets in his fists tight but looking at Ponyboy curiously.

“Nowhere. Just running.”

“On a Saturday?”

“Coach says I oughta.”

“Huh,” said Sodapop.

Ponyboy turned from the mirror. “What?”

“Oh nothing,” said Sodapop, but a wicked smile split his face, gaze roving up and down Ponyboy’s body. “Never knew you needed to grease your hair to run.”

In the mirror, the back of Ponyboy’s neck flushed red. “I always grease my hair,” he said.

“Sure,” said Sodapop, still grinning, eyebrows high on his face.

Ponyboy crossed his arms. “You wanna come or something?”

“God no,” Sodapop laughed, thumping back into his pillow. His smile was stupidly smug. “Have fun on your run, Pony. Stay safe. Use – well, you know what to use.”

Ponyboy slammed the door as he fled. Older brothers were the _worst_.

This fact was only proven truer when Ponyboy ran straight into Darry as he exited the shower. Steam was rising from his older brother’s bare shoulders, which were annoyingly high compared to the top of Ponyboy’s head.

“Hey, now. Where’s the fire?” Darry caught him by the arms, hands like worn baseball gloves against his skin. “Where on earth are you going this early? Don’t you know it’s the weekend?”

“Oh, don’t you start in too,” Ponyboy snapped.

It came out harsher than he meant to. Darry jerked his hands back, expression going rigid, and Ponyboy dropped his gaze to the ground as a heavy feeling rolled through him. He wasn’t surprised when Darry stepped back. Ever since that one time Darry had hit him, this had been the way of it. Darry getting scared and stiff the second either of them raised their voices.

“Sorry,” Ponyboy muttered. “Soda was giving me grief.”

Some of the tension in Darry’s shoulders loosened.

“You going for another run?”  Darry asked. Ponyboy nodded, still staring at the floor. It was quiet a moment. “You know if you ever want company.”

The words halted there, awkwardly. Ponyboy didn’t say anything and felt worse about it every second. Running with Darry? Ponyboy tried to picture it. Even the thought of having to pay attention to someone else, even his older brother, while running made him feel like spiders were crawling under his skin.

And today especially, when his head already full of someone else - Ponyboy felt another flash of heat in his face and new he must have been red by now.

“I should go,” Ponyboy muttered, sidling around his brother carefully. He didn’t look up as he made his way to the door, though he felt Darrys’ eyes trailing after him the whole way.

The screen door rattled as it swung shut. Outside, finally.  The streets lay fresh before his sneaker-tips. Ponyboy drank in a grateful breath of crisp morning air.

He stepped off the porch, skipped down pavement to the short gate surrounding their lot, and let his home and all the little worries of the morning slip off as he took off down the asphalt.

Dally had said he had a new car, but he hadn’t said what kind and Pony hadn’t seen it. Ponyboy had thought – had hoped, really – that Dally would turn up on his own and set all of his worries at ease, but the weekend had rolled around and that hadn’t happened.

It was probably a bit dumb, just running around town without actually knowing what he was looking for. Ponyboy had half convinced himself that he’d dreamed the whole thing with Dally. That had happened before, after Johnny died and sometimes even later, when things got tough. It was hard to tell sometimes what had really happened and what was just in his head. Normally he would ask Sodapop, but in this case if Dally’s return was real then Pony had made a promise not to tell. Greasers stick to their promises.

He weaved around the East Side streets, which moved slow and sluggish like the whole neighborhood knew it was too early to be awake. Ponyboy wasn’t really going anywhere in particular, just sort of scoping out the cars, looking for something unfamiliar. He tried to imagine Dally driving in one of the East Side’s classic pieces of junk, but even though Dally was poor Ponyboy couldn’t quite picture it. An image flashed through his head – Dally riding a heaving thoroughbred, gallant as any southern gentlemen, and a pair of wide dark eyes sparkling happily for once.

Ponyboy shook his head, spit, and ran faster. He hadn’t thought of Johnny’s face in sometime. He couldn’t. It wasn’t healthy, said the doctors – agreed Darry and Soda when it was all explained to them – and Ponyboy took Johnny’s old comment about Dally and southern gentlemen and let it fly in the wind behind him.

His feet went on pounding.

It was a good hour that he ran on like that. Sweat in his eyes, sun on his back, Ponyboy thought he could go on forever just running, when a car pulled along side him and a voice called his name.

“I thought that was you sweating like a pig,” laughed Curly Shepard, black hair a tangle as he stuck his head out the window. “Man, are you trying to melt yourself to death? Get on over here.”

Ponyboy grinned, jogging to the car and smacking Curly’s outstretched hand. They had scars, the two of them, from when they were young and dared each other to press hot cigarettes to their palms. It wasn’t the sort of thing you forgot.

“I thought you were gone,” Ponyboy said, folding his arms and leaning against the driver’s window. Curly had graduated from juvenile detention to stints in the county jail years ago, though never for more than a few months at a time somehow.

“You know how good I am at good behavior,” Curly said, laughing again. “And how about you? I hear you’ve got the pick of some awfully fancy schools, Ponyboy. You going to be a college shmuck or something?”

“It ain’t like that,” Ponyboy denied. “I take it you ran into Darry.”

“Didn’t need to,” Curly said. “He about showed the whole bar the drawings on his fridge last week, the way he was bragging. And he wasn’t even drunk or anything. It was embarrassing.”

“You’re telling me,” Ponyboy muttered.

Curly snickered. “Hey listen, Pony, I was looking for one of you guys anyway. I need a favor.”

Ponyboy sobered up. The Shepherds were good friends to have, but risky too. They were some serious hoods. “How’s that?” Pony asked.

Curly gave him a withering scowl. “Oh, don’t you look at me like that. It ain’t nothing serious.” He jerked his head. “Come on. Hop in and I’ll tell you.”

Pony looked down at himself, shaking his head. “I’m all sweaty, Curly. I don’t – ”

“Hop _in,_ ” interrupted Curly and Ponyboy got in. Curly didn’t wait for Pony to get his seatbelt on, peeling away from the cub with a squeal of his tires. Ponyboy clicked the seatbelt in, holding it gingerly away from his sweaty neck and looking nervously around the other cars for a cop.

 “What is it?” Pony asked, when they finally reached a stoplight. He tried not to sound wary, even though caution was all Darry ever preached at him. There was no point being greaser if you were going to act afraid of a hood.

“It’s about the rodeo,” Curly told him easy enough. “There’s one coming up in a few weeks over in Bixby. Tim and I, we’ve got this horse – ”

“Sodapop doesn’t ride rigged races.”

The words jumped out of Ponyboy, cutting right through Curly’s pitch, and Curly’s hand came around, slapping the back of Ponyboy’s head. He yanked Ponyboy’s ear for good measure, glaring at him with a sour eye.

“You think I don’t know that?” Curly demanded, but despite his hot tone Ponyboy wasn’t bothered. To the Shepherds a bit of hitting was downright brotherly. “Honestly, you get accepted into a few colleges and it’s like you forget who I am. There isn’t nobody on the East Side who doesn’t know your brother rides the straight and narrow. God almighty.”

Ponyboy subsided into silence and Curly eyed him, making sure he meant it before finally going on. “As I was saying. Tim and I have a horse. A bought and paid for horse from some a fella who owed us. What we don’t have is a rider. You fellas are more rodeo boys than me and Tim. We figured between your brother and Dally one of them might – ”

“Dally?”

This time Curly’s fist shot out against Ponyboy’s arm. “Would you quit that!” snapped Curly. “It’s not polite to interrupt.”

“Sorry,” said Ponyboy quickly, but his mind was already far past that sudden ache in his bicep. “What’d you mean about Dally?”

Curly frowned at the road. “What do you mean, what do I mean? He’s a good enough rider, ain’t he? That’s what I mean.”

That didn’t help Ponyboy out one inch. “You – I mean, have you heard something about him? It’s been four years.”

“Shouldn’t you know?” Curly shrugged and rolled forward before Ponyboy could answer. “Well, whatever. I figure your brother can do about as well as anyone else, if not better. Plus I heard about that business at the DX station. I’m surprised Soda left Two-Bit with all his teeth for that one. There’s money for him if he rides for us.”

“That’s – ” It took a long moment for Ponyboy’s thoughts to catch up with his tongue. “Yeah, that’s great. I’ll let him know.”

Now that his message had been received, Curly sat back in his seat and quirked his lips. “Good. Thanks, Pony. Hey, where do you want to go? I’ll drop you.”

A glance out the window showed downtown still thick around them. “Where’re you heading?” Ponyboy asked.  

“Down to the pool hall. Why? You wanna spend the day with your old pal Curly? My, think of what your mother would say.”

Ponyboy’s thoughts snagged. He glanced out the window again. They were pretty downtown; close to the bars and the office buildings and all the little shops selling dresses and sweets between them. A thought occurred to him.

“Actually, yeah. Yeah, I could use a ride.”

“Where to?”

Ponyboy gave him the directions, sitting back and watching the shops fade away. They were back inside the East Side in minutes.

*

He had Curly drop him not long past the train tracks, waited until his taillights were long out of view, and then jogged the most direct route to a place half-lost in childhood memory.

It was hard to remember sometimes that Dally’s real name was Dallas Winston and Dallas Winston had been only seventeen when Johnny had – when all that stuff went down with Johnny. It was strange for Ponyboy to think that he was now older than his last memory of Dallas. Ponyboy still felt like a kid most of the time in way Dally never had.

The point was, Dally being seventeen when he left meant that he’d left behind at least one parent. For all Dally crashed on the Curtis couch or in Buck Merrill’s spare room, he wasn’t an orphan or a foster kid. There was somewhere else Dally went too, Ponyboy knew, even if he’d never stepped foot inside before.

The Winston home stood on the far edge of town, up a short dirt driveway run over with long weeds. It was a skinny metal shell that shined chrome in the daylight and concealed its wheels behind white skirting. Its saving graces were two: a good bit of green garden that separated the trailer from its nearest neighbor and what was sat in that stretch of green. It was a black motorcycle, hardly new but shining so clean Pony could count his teeth in it.

A set of wheels, Dally had said. Not a car. Wheels.

Ponyboy didn’t believe much in God, but he thought luck might be on his side now. A clammy feeling took hold of his palms as he climbed the narrow set of stairs to the trailer’s front door. There was noise inside. A radio maybe. Or voices.

Ponyboy knocked on the door.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. Drop me a line below if you want to say hello. :)


	4. Chapter 4

The bottle in Ponyboy’s hand was dewy and cold. His nail scraped under the moist wrapper, dragging the logo away, as he watched Dally stomp around the trailer.

“Christ, Ponyboy,” Dally said, circling the small space for the fifth time in as many minutes.

Ponyboy didn’t respond, peeling away at that wrapper as his eyes wandered from the bumps on Dally’s knuckles to the inside of the tiny trailer. It was a one-roomer, with the bedroom tucked away in the back and a kitchen table that screwed down to sleep another person. There was a gray smoke line along the ceiling like no one had ever thought to crack a window, but the tiny metal sink was clear of dishes. Through the open bedroom door Pony could see a woman’s pair of shoes discarded in the threshold.

“I can go,” Ponyboy said, feeling like he’d peeked something far more intimate than just shoes. This was the place of Dally’s childhood? It just didn’t seem big enough.

“I didn’t say that.” Dally’s footsteps rattled the trailer as he stalked back to the table. He sat down – flung himself more like it – and stared at Ponyboy like he just couldn’t believe it. “Christ,” he said again.

It was strange seeing Dally outside of the night. He always seemed like a dark shadow in Pony’s mind, but under the bright fluorescents of the trailer the blonde in his hair shone. There was red in his face too, leaving his expression brimming with unexpected life.

“What are you doing here, kid?” Dally asked, getting straight to it.

Ponyboy let his eyes drop back to the bottle in his hands. Kept his eyes there even when Dally thumped the table with a fist. “I dunno. Thought maybe you’d stop by the house. You didn’t though.”

“Been busy,” Dally said, voice like he’d been gone for a weekend and not four years.

Ponyboy risked a glance up and found Dally glaring at the ceiling, chin tilted back. The tail end of that nasty scar was just visible around his neck. Ponyboy wanted to touch it. To follow it up with his fingers and dig his nails into whatever secrets were hidden there. A long overdue question sat on his tongue, but he swallowed it down. Asking Dally _where_ and _why_ was always a fruitless endeavor.

“You gonna come by now?” Pony asked instead. “The gang would be real pleased to see you.”

“Don’t know,” Dally grunted, still staring at the ceiling. “Maybe.”

That was as good as a no. Ponyboy curled his fingers tighter around the bottle Dally’d given him. “Curly Shepard’s been looking for you,” he said.

Dally’s chin jerked down, his mouth a thin line and something awful in his eyes. “You told Shepherd I was here?”

Ponyboy shook his head. “I didn’t. You told me to keep it secret and I kept it. You knowI’m good for it.”

Still, it took Dally a few seconds before that terrible look went away. “Yeah. Yeah, I know it.”

“He just offered me a ride, that was all. He said he was looking for you or Sodapop to ride for him. At the rodeo, I mean.”

Dally made a flippant noise, not looking at Pony. It was like a kick in the gut. Ponyboy’s eyes went skittering off the table and back around the trailer, unable to look at the line of hard tension in Dally’s neck.

“Course I told him you and Soda only ride clean anyway,” Ponyboy went on, the words fluttering helplessly out of his mouth. “He said he knew that. Everybody knows that, I mean. Or did know that. About you and Soda. But I thought maybe – I mean, it was strange that he brought up your name since you’ve been . . . Well, I thought maybe he’d already seen you, that’s all. I didn’t tell him you were back in town though. I can keep my mouth shut.”

To prove it, he shut up his lips right then, grinding his teeth together. He eyes caught on those shoes again. Was Dally’s mother the kind of woman who wore bright yellow heels? Or maybe Dally had a girl around, one that liked to dance. Pony could picture it. Dally was a creature of movement.

Then there was a hand, rough and warm, sliding once through his hair. Ponyboy jerked up, startled. Dally was leaned across the table, already drawing is hand back, and the expression on his face was real different from what had been there before.

“I do know that, Ponyboy,” Dally said. “You’ve always been a tuff little kid.”

Ponyboy felt warm in the face and looked away. “I’m eighteen.”

Dally smiled as he leaned back. “If you say so.”

“Shut up,” said Pony, but he was smiling too. He set the bottle down on the table, wiping his hands on his shorts. Then he asked the question that’d been bottling up all week. “So, are you? Coming around the house sometime?”

Dally let out a great, big sigh and rolled his shoulders. “Hell, kid, I don’t know. I didn’t exactly plan all this.”

“What’s that mean?”

Dally picked up his own bottle, abandoned on the table a while back, and took a swig. When he lowered it, his eyes had drifted off somewhere over Ponyboy’s shoulder. “Let’s just say this town isn’t exactly in my list of top ten vacation destinations.”

Ponyboy sat up, stung. “Vacation!”

“Mm,” hummed Dally, eyes still distant. “A shit one too.”

Ponyboy dropped his hands to the table with a smack. Dally whipped around. “Were you just not gonna come back?” demanded Ponyboy, an unexpected tide of hurt pushing his tone high. “Ever?”

It was what Dally and Steve and Two-Bit had said and what Ponyboy and Sodapop had refused to believe. What Ponyboy still refused to believe.

Dally’s dark, dark eyes had widened. His hands came up above the table. “Now, kid, hang on – ”

“We’re family,” Ponyboy said, riding over him. “You, me, the gang, and – ” Ponyboy’s mind flashed to Johnny’s determined eyes flickering in candlelight in that church, convinced through everything that Dally would be there, even though Dally was locked up and had been for weeks. “And you don’t just leave your family behind, Dally,” Ponyboy finished lamely, feeling the plot slip through him.

Dally snorted, pulling another drink from his bottle. “Tell that to my old man.”

The wind in Ponyboy’s sails died. “I’m not talking about that.”

“Yeah, well. I’m not talking about this,” Dally said, standing abruptly. Pony got up after him, but that just made Dally turn around and suck in a breath. “Would you quit that? I don’t need some kid following me around.”

“I’m not a kid anymore,” Ponyboy said, crossing his arms. Dally whirled around and for a moment Ponyboy wanted to jump, to be scared. Dallas Winston was seething, white teeth exposed, and it was something primal and easy for Ponyboy to feel threatened. But the kick Dally swung was aimed at the trailer’s dinky kitchen cabinets, which shook the whole aluminum shell and windows too.

“Look,” said Dally. “I’m sorry if this upsets you, Pony, but this isn’t my home anymore. This place is getting sold the second I get a chance and there isn’t any point in stirring the gang up for no good reason. As soon as the paperwork’s cleared I’m gone.”

 His speech ended with another vicious kick at the cabinets and Ponyboy looked down just in time to notice Dally’s strangely shiny black shoes. He looked across the trailer, to the yellow heels just beyond the doorway. The doorway was open, leading to a woman’s bedroom that was so obviously not Dally’s. This was Dally’s childhood home, wasn’t it? Which made it his mother’s room. Except –

“Dally, what happened?” Pony asked. “You mom – is she alright?”

One more kick to the cabinets, then Dally spread his hands along the counter, back to Ponyboy, as his shoulders shook. It was a moment before Ponyboy heard the quiet laughter, and then Dally was turning around, shaking his head and wearing a twisted sort smile.

“Glory, Pony, you were always too smart for your own good.”

It was as good as confirmation. Pony, thinking of his own parents and the accident that killed them, skipped over the pointless questions. “God, Dally, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Dally stepped back before Ponyboy could even think to put a hand on his arm, or hug him, or do _something_. “Not like I was a mama’s boy in the first place. And she was a shit parent anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” Ponyboy said again, uselessly. “If you need anything, you know Darry – ”

“What did I tell you about stirring shit up?” Dally interrupted, eyeing him. He shook his head once, hard. “No. Once the funeral done with and this place is taken care of, I’m leaving.”

“At least let me help,” Ponyboy said, stepping closer.

“I told you, kid. I don’t want – ”

“I’m not a kid,” Ponyboy cut in. “And I already know you’re here. You might as well let me.”

“Christ,” sighed Dally and Pony smiled, knowing he had won.

 


End file.
